June, 2024. In response to Jamie Ho and Junli Song
Charles Yoon is a community member of The Faraway Nearby.
First off, I’d like to start by saying sorry for the delayed response for your remarks. They caught me at the height of all the daily busywork, and I did not think I could do it justice when it was clear to me that this required a diligent contemplation on my part. After finishing your remarks, that was indeed the case--so thank you for giving me this opportunity to stop and think for a while through your experiences.
I guess I can call myself a first generation immigrant. I lived in Korea during my early childhood, but for the majority of my formulative years I lived abroad in the US and the UK. While I have spent more time within my cultural background, I find myself with a growing sense of disparity. It takes me more time to assimilate every time I go back, even the little things like re-tapping subway cards when exiting the station.
It seems I’m neither Korean, American, nor British. Or maybe I’m all of them, or at least some. Indeed, we are a patchwork of knowledge, I guess especially so in my case. So I find myself relating more to your parents, although they have seen greater differences from where they started and are now, and had a lot more to overcome along their way.
The more that I realise that whatever I remember are in the past and may no longer be relevant, I find myself clinging onto its memories. Whether that’s a mere desire to relive our memories or a desperate need to not forget a piece of us I don’t know, but there is a sense that if I do not remind myself of my memories it may disappear never to be recollected again.
So yeah, if I were to stay here for so long, I’d not want to go back. There is nothing left of “home” back there anymore, only just an affirmation that my “home” is in the past.
Thus I find myself justifying our parents--through telling their stories a part of their experience lives on. Maybe that’s why our parents find a desperate need to shelter any fragmented shards of their knowledge in us, however mundane that may be.
Thank you for sharing your experiences--maybe I should give my parents a call.
Charles